Film Exchange Building

Project Description

The Film Exchange Building was built in 1926 at 1830 Cass Ave, at the corner of Montcalm Street, in downtown Detroit. The Film Exchange Building was built to store movie and film roll for all the theaters that were all over Detroit. The building was in a perfect location between all the theaters in downtown Detroit. The Film Exchange Building was designed by noted-Detroit architect C. Howard Crane. It was seven stories tall and features a beautiful stone plaque with the letters “FEB” above the main entrance. FEB obviously stands for the Film Exchange Building.

The biggest problem with the Film Exchange Building was to no real fault of the building. By the 1960’s, production and filming of movies became much different than it had been when the Film Exchange Building was built. There was no more need for large storage space of film and the Film Exchange Building’s future was in trouble. In 1970, the Film Exchange Building was left abandoned. It is one of the longest-standing abandoned buildings in Detroit, as it has remained abandoned since 1970.

In 2012, a sign on the north side of the Film Exchange Building announced that the building was going to be a new storage rental building, specializing in media storage. The plan was to convert the pre-depression era film storage vaults into new and modern storage.

As of 2017, nothing has happened to the Film Exchange Building yet and it still sits abandoned.